Zekiye Ozdemir and Gulseren Caliskan, both 70, sit staidly in their wicker chairs directly in front of a large iron police barrier, undeterred by the cold mist wafting down from the grey sky above.

On one side of the fence lies a parking lot, now a forbidden zone. It’s guarded by a hulking water cannon truck and a detachment of heavily armoured riot police, many of their faces concealed by black scarves.

On the other side is a group of some 100 activists and concerned citizens protesting what they call an attack on one of the few large green spaces left in Istanbul. They’re handing out tea and snacks from under their makeshift tents and umbrellas, to stave off the inclement weather.

The matronly pensioners blithely chirp away, paying no attention to the dozens of police looming nearby. “We came here to say no to skyscrapers, to protect nature, and to support the youth.”, Ozdemir explains enthusiastically.

Validebag Grove – ‘it’s turning upper-middle class housewives into activists’

In early October, activists collected 80,000 signatures of people opposed to the Uskudar Municipality’s construction project that will include a small mosque, wedding halls, open-air theaters and artificial pools.

The construction site is in a parking lot on the very edge of Validebag Grove – home to some 7,000 trees and several historical buildings. The grove is in Uskudar, a hilly, mostly conservative district on Istanbul’s Asian side.

Hilmi Turkmen, mayor of Uskudar Municipality and member of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has called the activists “fake environmentalists” and said that “Unfortunately too much tolerance and goodwill drives people wild and makes them believe that they are right.”

Activists accuse the government of politicizing their citizens. “They are turning upper-middle class housewives into activists”, says Cigdem Cidamli, an environmentalist with Istanbul City Defense.

Police violence – ‘they’re like an army!’

At the crack of dawn on 21 October, a police-escorted bulldozer crept into the parking lot and starting ripping up concrete. Furious activists called the excavation unlawful because the legal process was still pending, and started a 24-hour vigil that still continues.

Later that afternoon, an administrative court suspended the construction, saying the Uskudar Municipality didn’t have a license for the mosque. When activists announced the stay of execution, police attacked them with teargas.

“They’re like an army”, environmentalist Onur Akgul says, noting there are almost as many cops as activists. Akgul is a member of Northern Forests’ Defence, an environmental group formed after the Gezi protests of 2013, which were also sparked by commercial development of a central green space.

On 23 October, construction resumed despite the court order. “They’re not listening to the law”, Akgul says. “What’s happening now is purely illegal.”

Several prominent activists and a journalist have been detained and beaten by police, to the surprise of no one. Cidamli was amongst those detained. “They beat us”, she says. “They threatened me, [saying] ‘I will fuck you, and kill you, [and] shoot you.'”

On the weekend of 25 – 26 October, activists organized a march and a picnic, and police responded by erecting the iron barricade and bringing in the riot squad. The following Monday, protesters filled the road with their cards to block excavation equipment, and tow trucks came to remove them, some with the drivers still inside.

A couple of weeks later, a group of women tried to enter the construction site. One of them promised the riot police “we will just enter the grove, look around, and then leave”, adding “you are also our children.” When they tried to make their way past the police, they were immediately pepper sprayed.

Asian Istanbul  – the new target for ‘urban transformation’

The Validebag Grove is a protected natural site, and a designated meeting spot during a natural disaster such as an earthquake.

The Uskudar Municipality is trying to annul the grove’s protected status, and activists say that because of Validebag’s location in an attractive residential neighbourhood, the Municipality wants to tear out trees and build more housing and commercial centres.

The ruling AK Party has been rapidly transforming Istanbul with a number of ‘urban transformation’ projects. Critics argue the changes are implemented from the top down with very little public consultation or regard for environmental effects, and that pro-AKP construction firms get the most lucrative bids.

They say laws have been altered to facilitate hasty construction and decrease the role of professional organizations responsible for ensuring high standards.

“Istanbul has become a city that is continuously under the assault of this urban transformation and privatization of public areas”, Cidanli says. Most of these projects have been undertaken on the European side of Istanbul, but according to Cidanli, “the Anatolian part of Istanbul is now under attack.”

Despite a dismal environmental record, Istanbul recently entered a competition to be the European Green Capital of 2017.

But according to British consulting agency World Cities Culture Forum, green spaces in Istanbul account for only 1.5% of the city – much smaller than other Europeans capitals such as London (38%), Berlin (14.4%), or Paris (9.40%).

Mosque a Trojan horse for commercial development

Cidanli fears this construction project is the first step in terminating Validebag’s protected status and opening the grove to commercial development. “This is a very profit-oriented project under the guise of a mosque”, she says. “They will go step by step”, slowly nibbling at the edges of the green space.

She says the municipality tried a month earlier to appropriate land in Validebag from the north with a project to build parking lots, but were unable to proceed due to opposition. Now, she says, they’re trying from the south.

Cidanli says these projects often start with a mosque because if anyone raises concerns, they’re accused of being Islamophobic in a very religious country. “Maybe they thought that if they say this will be a mosque, nobody would dare to oppose it”, she says.

President Erdogan, who has a private residence in Uskudar and has voiced support for the construction project, often attempts to stoke religious sentiment against his critics.

“Maybe some were uncomfortable because it is a masjid [small mosque]”, he told journalists on 25 October, accusing critics of the Validebag construction of being intolerant of Islam.

The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose members have visited and voiced support for demonstrators in Validebag, immediately shot back: “They are trying to use the mosque card to claim that people are against places of worship”, CHP deputy Mahmut Tanal told local news. “This is completely false.”

“We don’t have any problem with mosques”, Akgul, the environmentalist with Northern Forests’ Defence says, pointing out that many of the activists themselves are devout Muslims.

‘We don’t need any more mosques. We need oxygen!’

The issue has now been taken up by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Its Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrikulu submitted a parliamentary question for Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu earlier this month about allegations that the Uskudar Municipality had agreed to turn parts of Validebag Grove into a car park. (The link has mysteriously been taken down but I accessed a cached version.)

According to Tanrikulu the construction of the mosque is “only for show” and the land will actually be allocated to a company linked to the ruling AK Party company. “What is the name of the company that signed an agreement with Üsküdar’s mayor for a car park on Validebag Grove?” he asked.

Religious or not, many of the demonstrators are staunch secularists, and have put up banners bearing the portrait of modern Turkey’s fiercely secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Some wonder why another mosque needs to be built in an area that already has 26, four of which are less than 600 metres away. “We don’t need any more mosques, says 70 year-old demonstrator Ozdemir. “We need oxygen!”

On October 31 the court’s stay of execution was reversed after an appeal, saying the project site lies outside of the protected grove. Some local papers and opposition politicians accused the Uskudar Municipality of interfering with the legal process, and lawyers representing the activists vowed to appeal the court’s reversal.

Among them was Tanrikulu – who claimed, in his parliamentary question, that the Municipality had tried to bypass the decision of the Istanbul 7th Administrative Court – which ordered a stop on construction at the site – by altering the sheet and parcel numbers of the car park.

Despite the unfavourable ruling, and the rising atmosphere of threat and initimidation from both government and police, the protestors are holding firm. And Ozdemir remains confident of ultimate victory, insisting: “The people will prevail!”

Nick Ashdown is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. You can follow him on Twitter @Nick_Ashdown

Summon into your mind, for a moment, the image of a deeply perplexed Ed Davey, late at night, deep in thought, sitting there behind his Secretary of State’s desk in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, staring down at a single large number in a memo from his Permanent Secretary:

Strictly confidential – for the Secretary of State

As requested, we’ve researched three options to provide c. 7% of total UK electricity demand by 2025 at the latest:

1. A barrage on the Severn Estuary.
2. 2 new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
3. 20 GW of renewable electricity generation capacity on UK farms.

As it happens, Secretary of State, the choice is actually a bit of a no-brainer, apart from two little stumbling points that I’ll come to in a minute.

For the time being, let’s immediately dismiss Option 1. Too many uncertainties, very high cost, and the bird brigade really don’t like it.

Regarding Option 2, we already know that those two reactors (at c. £24 billion) would be the most expensive power stations anywhere in the world – were they ever to be built.

As you know, Secretary of State, recent news means that now looks increasingly unlikely:

• The main construction company involved (AREVA) is in a ‘financial crisis’.
• Even parts of the nuclear industry think the chosen reactor design is “unconstructable“.
• And I’m afraid it gets worse: we’ve known for some time that the Treasury is carrying out a secret review of the whole deal.

It’s a bleak outlook. Which brings us to Option 3 – and this really is the no-brainer!

Farming energy – 20GW can be mobilised by 2020

A brilliant new piece of research from Forum for the Future, Farmers Weekly and Nottingham Trent University has analysed the potential for rolling out different renewable technologies on UK farms – principally solar and wind, with a bit of anaerobic digestion thrown in for good measure.

Based on experience to date (there are already more pioneers out there than you might imagine!), their report estimates that it would be relatively simple to get the first 20 GW onto the grid from farm-based solar and wind.

And that could be on stream by 2020 if we get behind it, well before the projected date of 2023 for completion at Hinkley Point – if you believe that!

The National Farmers Union loves it – and you can’t say that very often! It’s true, of course, that wind has fallen out of favour with your coalition partners, who are competing furiously with UKIP to see who can more effectively trash our wind industry while simultaneously hammering the rural economy.

Despite the media and political spin, the majority of Brits like wind power. But solar power is really very popular. Not just on roofs (farmhouses and farm buildings have lots of roofs pointing in the right direction, or so I’m told!), but mounted on the ground.

14GW of solar on 0.5% of Britain’s farmland – and the sheep can carry on grazing

So let’s look at solar more closely. If these ground-mounted solar farms are designed in the right way (to minimise visual intrusion through screening with trees and so on), on the right bits of land, with local communities consulted and involved at every turn, this would be an absolute winner.

And the 14GW of solar in the overall total of 20 GW of renewables would require no more than 21,000 hectares, or just 0.5% of the land area of UK farms. Typically that will be pastureland on south-facing slopes, and guess what – with the panels in place, animals can just carry on grazing.

And just to prove it I’ve got some wonderful photos to show you, Secretary of State, of sheep grazing happily amongst the solar panels – and chickens too, come to that! There are some even more beautiful images of panels in amongst restored wildflower meadows, with bees and butterflies all over the place.

It even turns out that bumblebees just love making their nests in the ground sheltered by the panels! What, as they say, Secretary of State, is not to like?!

Two things, unfortunately, as I mentioned above.

SNAFU #1 – Liz Truss

Your fellow Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Liz Truss, threw a bit of a hissy fit about farmers needing to stick to the business of food production, and not getting involved in energy production.

It turns out that she hadn’t seen any of the beautiful photos I’ve referred to above, and seriously thought that ground-mounted solar arrays carpeted the entire land area! (I blame her ignorance on Defra’s Permanent Secretary personally!)

And this is unfortunate, because even she has belatedly woken up to the importance of protecting pollinating insects, with lots of enthusiastic discussions going on between her department and National Rail and the Highways Agency.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t realise that farm-based solar could be a great way of helping all those bees – which we probably want to be close to the crops anyway, I would have thought?

SNAFU #2 – Hinkley C nuclear power station

We’ve pretty much put all our low-carbon eggs into EDF’s all-encompassing nuclear basket – to the tune of £24 billion, or even £37 billion by some estimates!

I’m sorry to have to tell you, Secretary of State, that there’s no way of saving face here. You’re already an object of scorn for some environmentalists (I think I showed you that blog from bloody Jonathon Porritt!), and if you now flip back again, having so assertively flopped into the nuclear camp, many people (even outside the Treasury) might start to question your judgement.

However, I don’t think we need panic here. The Hinkley Point deal with EDF probably won’t come unstuck until after the next General Election, and in the meantime, you have a wonderful opportunity to buff up your residual green credentials by pressing the start button on Farm Power UK right now.

And the overall cost of renewable electricity from our farms is likely to be much lower than that from nuclear power stations, while also creating much needed rural employment.

Moreover the power will begin to flow pretty much immediately – reducing the chances of electricity shortages in time for winter 2015 – never mind waiting until 2023 (if we’re lucky) before a single watt is produced.

We’re talking 7% after all!!

Jonathon Porritt has been an environmental campaigner since 1974, and is still hard at it nearly 40 years on. His latest book is The World we Made. He blogs at jonathonporritt.com/blog.

This article is also published on Jonathon’s blog.

Plans to build two giant nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in south-west England are being reviewed as French energy companies now seek financial backing from China and Saudi Arabia – while the British government considers whether it has offered vast subsidies for a white elephant.

A long-delayed final decision on whether the French electricity utility company EDF will build two 1.6GW European Pressurised water Reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset – in what would be the biggest construction project in Europe – was due in the new year, but is likely to drift again.

Construction estimates have already escalated to £25 billion, which is £9 billion more than a year ago, and four times the cost of putting on the London Olympics last year.

Costs escalate. And escalate …

Two prototypes being built in Olikuoto, Finland, and Flamanville, France, were long ago expected to be finished and operational, but are years late and costs continue to escalate.

Until at least one of these is shown to work as designed, it would seem a gamble to start building more, but neither of them is expected to produce power until 2017.

With Germany phasing nuclear power out altogether and France reducing its dependence on the technology, all the industry’s European hopes are on Britain’s plans to build 10 new reactors. But British experts, politicians and businessmen have begun to doubt that the new nuclear stations are a viable proposition.

Steve Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, London, said: “The project is at very serious risk of collapse at the moment. Only four of those reactors have ever been ordered. Two of them are in Europe, and both of those are about three times over budget. One is about five or six years late and the other is nine years late. Two more are in China and are doing a bit better, but are also running late.”

Tom Greatrex, the British Labour party opposition’s energy spokesman, called on the National Audit Office to investigate whether the nuclear reactors were value for money for British consumers.

Peter Atherton, of financial experts Liberum Capital, believes the enormous cost and appalling track record in the nuclear industry of doing things on time mean that ministers should scrap the Hinkley plans.

Billionaire businessman Jim Ratcliffe, who wants to invest £640 million in shale gas extraction in the UK, said that the subsidy that the British government would pay for nuclear electricity is “outrageous”.

Cold feet in the Treasury as liabilities are set to soar

Finding the vast sums of capital needed to finance the project is proving a problem. Both EDF and its French partner company, Areva, which designed the European Pressurised water Reactor (EPR), have money troubles. Last week, Areva suspended future profit predictions and shares fell by 20%.

Chinese power companies have offered to back the project, but want many of the jobs to go to supply companies back home – something the French are alarmed about because they need to support their own ailing nuclear industry. Saudi Arabia is offering to help too, but this may not go down well in Britain.

On the surface, all is well. Preparation of the site is already under way on the south-west coast of England, with millions being spent on earthworks and new roads. The new reactors would be built next to two existing much smaller nuclear stations – one already closed and the second nearing the end of its life. The new ones would produce 7% of Britain’s electricity.

But leaks from civil servants in Whitehall suggest that the government may be getting cold feet about its open-ended guarantees. The industry has a long history of cost overruns and cancellations of projects when millions have already been spent – including an ill-fated plan to build a new nuclear station on the same site 20 years ago.

The Treasury is having a review because of fears that, once this project begins, so much money will have been invested that the government will have to bail it out with billions more of taxpayers’ money to finish it – or write off huge sums.

The whole project is based on British concern about its ageing nuclear reactors, which produce close on 20% of the country’s electricity. The government wanted a new generation of plants to replace them and eventually produce most of the country’s power.

£37 billion subsidy package approved by EU – but is it legal?

In order to induce EDF to build them, it offered subsidies of £37 billion in guaranteed electricity prices over the 60-year life of the reactors. This would double the existing cost of electricity in the UK.

The European Commission gave permission for this to happen, despite the distortion to the competitive electricity market. But this decision is set to be challenged in the European Court by the Austrian government and renewable energy companies, which will further delay the project.

Since the decision was made to build nuclear power stations, renewable energy has expanded dramatically across Europe and costs have dropped. Nuclear is now more costly than wind and solar power. In Britain alone, small-scale solar output has increased by 26% in the last year.

In theory, there are a number of other nuclear companies – from the US, China, Japan and Russia – keen to build stations of their own design in Britain, but they would want the same price guarantees as EDF for Hinkley Point.

With a general election in the UK looming in May next year, no decisions will be reached on any of these projects any time soon. And a new government might think renewables are a better bet.

Paul Brown, a former environment correspondent for the Guardian, now writes for Climate News Network. He began working as a reporter on a weekly paper in Sussex and progressed to evening and morning newspapers before joining The Guardian in 1981. In his role as environment correspondent, he travelled to more than 50 countries, and to the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

This article was first published by Climate News Network.

The World Bank will invest heavily in clean energy and only fund coal projects in “circumstances of extreme need” because climate change will undermine efforts to eliminate extreme poverty, says its president Jim Yong Kim.

Talking ahead of a UN climate summit in Peru next month, Kim said he was alarmed by World Bank-commissioned research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, which said that as a result of past greenhouse gas emissions the world is condemned to unprecedented weather events.

“The findings are alarming. As the planet warms further, heatwaves and other weather extremes, which today we call once­-in­-a-century events, would become the new climate normal, a frightening world of increased risk and instability.

“The consequences for development would be severe, as crop yields decline, water resources shift, communicable diseases move into new geographical ranges, and sea levels rise.”

“We know that the dramatic weather extremes are already affecting millions of people, such as the five to six feet of snow that just fell on Buffalo, and can throw our lives into disarray or worse.

“Even with ambitious mitigation, warming close to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is locked in. And this means that climate change impact such as extreme heat events may now be simply unavoidable.”

‘Only in extreme need will we do coal again’

But the Bank, which has traditionally been one of the world’s largest funders of fossil fuel projects and has been accused of adding to the problem of climate change, said it could not ignore the poorest countries’ need for power.

“We are going to have to focus all of our energy to move toward renewable and cleaner forms of energy”, said Kim.

“But on the other hand we believe very strongly that the poorest countries have a right to energy and that we not ask these energy ­poor countries to wait until there are ways of ensuring that solar and wind power can provide the kind of base load that all countries need in order to industrialise.

“The stakes have never been higher. We cannot continue down the current path of unchecked growing emissions. The case for taking action now on climate change is overwhelming, and the cost of inaction will only rise.”

Kim was backed by Rachel Kyte, World Bank group vice president and special envoy for climate change. “It will only be in circumstances of extreme need that we would contemplate doing coal again”, she said.

“We would only contemplate doing [it] in the poorest of countries where their energy transition as part of their low-carbon development plan means that there are no other base load power sources available at a reasonable price.”

“The focus is on being able to ramp up our lending and the leveraging of our lending into all forms of renewable energy. That’s the strategy. It includes everything from all sizes of hydro through to wind, to solar, to concentrated solar, to geothermal. I think we’re invested in every dimension of renewable energy. That is what we’re concentrating on.”

Now, what about oil, gas and other fossil fuels

The bank’s report showed that with a 2C warming, soya and wheat crop yields in Brazil could decrease 50-70%: “In the Middle east and north Africa, a large increase in heatwaves combined with warmer average temperatures will put intense pressure on already scarce water resources with major consequences for food security.

“Crop yields could decrease by up to 30% at 1.5-2C and by almost 60% at 3-4C. Pressure on resources might increase the risk of conflict.”

Climate change posed a substantial risk to development and cutting poverty, the report said, adding that action on emissions need not come at the expense of economic growth.

But the bank made no commitment to cut funding for oil or other fossil fuel exploration. Analysis earlier this year by Washington-based NGO Oil Change International showed that the bank had funded $21bn (£13bn) of fossil fuel projects since 2008, including $1bn of oil and other fossil fuel exploration in 2013.

“The bank has taken an important first step in essentially stopping its support for coal-fired power plants, but climate change is caused by more than just coal”, said Stephen Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International.

“The vast majority of currently proven fossil fuel reserves will need to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, but last year the bank provided nearly $1bn in support for finding more of these unburnable carbon reserves.”

John Vidal is Environment Editor for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.

Among the controversial projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the development and testing of a biofortified GMO banana developed to boost its iron, Vitamin E and pro-Vitamin A content.

To this end the Foundation, via its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, has so far given $15 million to Queensland University of Technology for the program run by Professor Dr James Dale, with a latest tranche of $10 million handed over this year.

The declared purpose is to roll out nutritional benefits across the tropics, but initially to India, Ugana, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda – all countries that sufer from widespread nutritional deficiencies.

And Dr Dale is certainly enthusiastic, telling the Independent that “This project has the potential to have a huge positive impact on staple food products across much of Africa and in doing so lift the health and wellbeing of countless millions of people over generations.”

So what’s so controversial about that?

What Dr Dale has done is to take the high beta-carotene banana gene for his GMO ‘super-bananas’ from an existing Fe’i banana variety from Papua New Guinea, following a study that compared ten cultivars with yellow to orange fruit.

The ‘winner’ was the Asupina cultivar, which had the highest level of trans beta-carotene – the most important pro-vitamin A carotenoid, with 1,412 μg/100 g of fresh weight, more than 25 times more than the level in the Cavendish cultivars that dominate the international banana trade.

The trouble is, this makes Dr Dales’ GMO ‘super-banana’ a clear case of biopiracy. The original Asupina, collected 25 years earlier from Papua New Guinea and held by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (Q-DPI), is the rightful property of the nation and the communities that developed it.

For this as much as any reason the humanitarian credentials of the GMO ‘super-banana’ are questionable. Most importantly, ‘red bananas‘ rich in pre-Vitamin A are already grown around the world with no need for any genetic modification.

They are popular across south Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Central and South America, and many varieties are prized for their soft flesh, sweet flavour and aroma of stawberries.

What’s the real motivation?

Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the tune of $15 million, and currently in Iowa undergoing human feeding studies, the GMO banana human feeding trials appears have been designed for marketing purposes. Certainly Scientific American calls them simply “market trials”.

They are certainly not trials for establishing the safety of GM bananas for human consumption, nor are they the thorough clinical studies that would be expected for a novel GMO food intended for daily consumption for vulnerable malnourished African infants.

Dr Dale himself has said he sees the GMO bananas are a door-opener to help facilitate the uptake of many more GMO crops in Africa and globally.

Both Dr Dale and Gates Foundation must surely be aware that previous human feeding trials of so-called ‘Golden Rice’ in the US and in China have been plagued with violations of research ethics and are currently mired in international scandal.

In Boston, Tufts University’s Institutional Review Board has suspended the lead Chinese researcher from the Tufts human trials of ‘Golden Rice’ from her permission to conduct human subject researcher after admitting there were serious irregularities and violations of ethics in the human feeding trials of ‘Golden Rice’ carried out in Hunan.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which published the Tufts study is reportedly retracting the article due to these violations of ethics. Nevertheless the Tufts study is positively referred to in the Australian government’s OGTR risk assessment for the GMO ‘super-bananas’.

Known to ‘science’ since 1788

Back to the biopiracy issue: Fe’i bananas (Musa troglodytarum L.) are a traditional food across the Asia-Pacific, found in an area ranging from Maluku in Indonesia to Tahiti and Hawaii in the Pacific.

In 1788, Daniel Solander, accompanying botanist Joseph Banks and James Cook on the voyage of the Endeavour, noted several varieties of Fe’i bananas used in Tahiti.

Artist Paul Gauguin painted the red Tahitian Fe’i banana in 1891. His paintings Le Repas (The Meal – see photo)), La Orana Maria (The Virgin Mary) and Tahitian Landscape all depict these red / orange bananas. In Indonesia they are known as pisang tongkat langit (sky cane bananas) because of the distinctive upright fruiting stem.

In the early 2000s the late biodiversity researcher and local foods promoter Lois Englberger – whose PhD at the University of Queensland was a “multiple methodology ethnographic study assessing the natural food sources of vitamin A” in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) – did the groundbreaking scientific work on rediscovering these high-beta carotene containing red indigenous bananas.

As she brought the existence of these red Fe’i bananas to the attention of the world scientific community, she reported on multiple varieties that are deliciou s when eaten raw, and others when baked or boiled.

She also helped to found the ‘Let’s Go Local!’ program with the NGO Island Food Community of Pohnpei, to promote the cultivation and consumption of nutritious local foods including indigenous banana cultivars – the use of which had been displaced by imported food cultures.

Its ‘Pohnpei Bananas’ Poster (see photo) shows photographs of 15 yellow-fleshed carotenoid-rich banana varieties, together with their carotenoid content, and a message explaining the health benefits of growing and eating carotenoid-rich bananas.

Thanks to the campaign the use of these varieties has increased sharply. Indeed it has been so successful that the ‘Karat’ banana – so called for its orange flesh and high beta-carotene content – has been adopted as the state emblem of Pohnpei and stamps have been issued featuring the Karat banana.

GMOs are the solution! (But what was the problem?)

All told, Dr Dale’s globe-trotting GMO bananas are a globe-trotting case of biopiracy. The PNG Asupina variety is not “wild” as Dr Dale has claimed, but a domesticated Fe’i cultivar developed over the centuries by indigenous farmers.

The traditional knowledge they have used comes directly from Micronesia and is the heritage of communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The Q-DPI collection from which Dr Dale and his colleagues sourced the Asupina variety should have been a collection held in public trust.

Meanwhile, Dr Dale has lectured in Indonesia, supported by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, claiming GMOs are a necessity to save bananas from extinction, in particular, he stresses, GMOs are necessary for insuring continued global production of commercial banana varieties.

Underplaying the very biodiversity on which he has have based his GMO bananas, Dale’s more immediate purposes appear to be in bio-prospecting local banana varieties for potentially commercially valuable genetic traits.

Tellingly, another gene for disease resistance which holds vast economic potential for commercial banana production they have taken from banana varieites from Maluku in Indonesia.

Mr Gates, why not just promote the existing ‘red banana’ cultivars?

An in-depth 2011 article in the New Yorker on the GMO bananas, in which the much touted vitamin A ‘super-bananas’ barely rate a mention, suggests that the GMO banana project’s larger ambition is to enter the international banana trade, setting itself up as the United Fruit of the 21st Century.

Perhaps that is why the GMO banana project is focused on India and Uganda – the first and second biggest producers of bananas (See: ‘We Have No Bananas‘ in The New Yorker by Mike Peed, 10th January 2011).

The New Yorker article suggests the real intended market for the GMO banana is the rich western consumer for whom bananas remain one of the most popular fruits, and notes that Dale “seemed pleased that neither Chiquita nor Dole would own his creation.”

And this is surely correct. As already noted, red bananas are grown around the tropics and subtropics. So why bother making a GMO banana merely to reproduce what already exists and is both popular and widely available? The answer must lie in the fact that Dale’s project is to produce a GMO version of the Cavendish banana, the main variety in international trade.

Could his real intention be to capture a commercial market in selling a premium, novelty ‘high nutrient’ banana to northern consumers? And in the process pave the way for other GMO bananas with commercially desirable qualities?

Certainly the GMO ‘super-bananas’ are an expensive distraction away from real solutions for vitamin A deficiency, despite Bill Gates’s obvious personal enthusiasm.

If he is so worried about Vitamin A deficiency in Uganda, as he claims, all he needs to do is to promote suitable ‘red banana’ cultivars for cultivation in areas where they have not traditionally been used.

Cultivars rich in pre-Vitamin A caroteinoids are already grown around the world – and are moreover delicious, known to be safe and nutritious, available for immediate cultivation – and free of patent restrictions, royalty fees and other incumbrances of the global intellectual property regime.

But then, perhaps that is the problem.

Adam Breasley works in Sydney, Australia for Mantasa, and Indonesian NGo working for food sovereignty and farmers rights.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Shell has been forced to reveal documents as part of an ongoing legal case against them in the UK High Court brought by 15,000 community members in Bodo in the Niger Delta.

The documents expose the fact that Shell has repeatedly made false claims about the size and impact of two major oil spills at Bodo in an attempt to minimize its compensation payments.

The documents also show that Shell has known for years that its pipelines in the Niger Delta were old and faulty.

It emerged that Shell did not tell the truth to the court in The Hague in the legal action brought by Milieudefensie / Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers in 2013.

The action was taken against Shell due to major oil spills in three Nigerian villages. The documents show that Shell lied about the situation in the village of Goi.

100,000 barrels spilt, says AI – but Shell only admitted to 1,640

Shell’s joint investigation report for the first oil spill in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total.

However, based on an independent assessment published by US firm Accufacts Inc., Amnesty International calculated the total amount of oil spilt exceeded 100,000 barrels.

Shell initially denied this and repeatedly defended its far lower figure. In the court documents Shell admits its figure is wrong in both this case, and that of a second spill, also in 2008, in the same area.

The admission throws Shell’s assessment of hundreds of other Nigeria spills into doubt, as all spill investigations are conducted in the same manner.

The potential repercussions are that hundreds of thousands of people may have been denied or underpaid compensation based on similar underestimates of other spills.

Pipelines in very poor condition – and Shell knew it

The court documents also show for the first time that Shell knew for years that its oil pipelines were in very poor condition and likely to leak. The court papers include an internal memo by Shell based on a 2002 study that states:

“the remaining life of most of the [Shell] Oil Trunklines is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard”. 

In another internal document dated 10 December 2009 a Shell employee warns:

“[the company] is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years”.

In the Dutch case, Shell argued in court that spills from its pipeline in Goi could not be blamed on the company’s negligence. Shell’s lawyer pointed to the precautionary measures that Shell had taken, such as the installation of a Leak Detection System.

In part because of its reference to this system, in 2013 Shell was not held responsible for the spills in Goi. But the documents that Shell have been forced to divulge to a British court now, reveal that no Leak Detection System was in place.

Milieudefensie’s lawyer has submitted to the court in The Hague a portion of the documents that came to light via the British court. On 12 March of next year, this court will hold its first session in the appeal that Milieudefensie and the Nigerian farmers have brought against the 2013 verdict by the court in The Hague.

Shell’s toxic legacy

Shell is responsible for a toxic legacy in the Niger Delta. People are dying, sick, can’t feed themselves and have no clean water because Shell destroyed their environment by drilling for oil.

UNEP researched the destruction, publishing a report in 2011. The report concluded that Shell had not taken sufficient action to clean up and set out initial steps to rectify the damage.

Platform’s research in Ogoniland shows that Shell has still not cleaned up, almost 3 years after the UNEP report was published. Platform witnessed creeks and soil reeking of oil, in areas that Shell claims to have remediated.

Environment Advocacy Video from Media for Justice Project on Vimeo.

Communities report oil crusts on their land, rotten crops and poisoned fish. Emergency water supplies have not been delivered, forcing local residents to drink oil-polluted water.

A No Progress report by Platform and Friends of Earth Europe, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Action and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) in August 2014 charted the systemic failure of the Nigerian Government and Shell to clean up horrendous oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

Action: Sign the petition to Shell’s CEO telling them to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

This article was originally published by Platform London.

Plans to build two giant nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in south-west England are being reviewed as French energy companies now seek financial backing from China and Saudi Arabia – while the British government considers whether it has offered vast subsidies for a white elephant.

A long-delayed final decision on whether the French electricity utility company EDF will build two 1.6GW European Pressurised water Reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset – in what would be the biggest construction project in Europe – was due in the new year, but is likely to drift again.

Construction estimates have already escalated to £25 billion, which is £9 billion more than a year ago, and four times the cost of putting on the London Olympics last year.

Costs escalate. And escalate …

Two prototypes being built in Olikuoto, Finland, and Flamanville, France, were long ago expected to be finished and operational, but are years late and costs continue to escalate.

Until at least one of these is shown to work as designed, it would seem a gamble to start building more, but neither of them is expected to produce power until 2017.

With Germany phasing nuclear power out altogether and France reducing its dependence on the technology, all the industry’s European hopes are on Britain’s plans to build 10 new reactors. But British experts, politicians and businessmen have begun to doubt that the new nuclear stations are a viable proposition.

Steve Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, London, said: “The project is at very serious risk of collapse at the moment. Only four of those reactors have ever been ordered. Two of them are in Europe, and both of those are about three times over budget. One is about five or six years late and the other is nine years late. Two more are in China and are doing a bit better, but are also running late.”

Tom Greatrex, the British Labour party opposition’s energy spokesman, called on the National Audit Office to investigate whether the nuclear reactors were value for money for British consumers.

Peter Atherton, of financial experts Liberum Capital, believes the enormous cost and appalling track record in the nuclear industry of doing things on time mean that ministers should scrap the Hinkley plans.

Billionaire businessman Jim Ratcliffe, who wants to invest £640 million in shale gas extraction in the UK, said that the subsidy that the British government would pay for nuclear electricity is “outrageous”.

Cold feet in the Treasury as liabilities are set to soar

Finding the vast sums of capital needed to finance the project is proving a problem. Both EDF and its French partner company, Areva, which designed the European Pressurised water Reactor (EPR), have money troubles. Last week, Areva suspended future profit predictions and shares fell by 20%.

Chinese power companies have offered to back the project, but want many of the jobs to go to supply companies back home – something the French are alarmed about because they need to support their own ailing nuclear industry. Saudi Arabia is offering to help too, but this may not go down well in Britain.

On the surface, all is well. Preparation of the site is already under way on the south-west coast of England, with millions being spent on earthworks and new roads. The new reactors would be built next to two existing much smaller nuclear stations – one already closed and the second nearing the end of its life. The new ones would produce 7% of Britain’s electricity.

But leaks from civil servants in Whitehall suggest that the government may be getting cold feet about its open-ended guarantees. The industry has a long history of cost overruns and cancellations of projects when millions have already been spent – including an ill-fated plan to build a new nuclear station on the same site 20 years ago.

The Treasury is having a review because of fears that, once this project begins, so much money will have been invested that the government will have to bail it out with billions more of taxpayers’ money to finish it – or write off huge sums.

The whole project is based on British concern about its ageing nuclear reactors, which produce close on 20% of the country’s electricity. The government wanted a new generation of plants to replace them and eventually produce most of the country’s power.

£37 billion subsidy package approved by EU – but is it legal?

In order to induce EDF to build them, it offered subsidies of £37 billion in guaranteed electricity prices over the 60-year life of the reactors. This would double the existing cost of electricity in the UK.

The European Commission gave permission for this to happen, despite the distortion to the competitive electricity market. But this decision is set to be challenged in the European Court by the Austrian government and renewable energy companies, which will further delay the project.

Since the decision was made to build nuclear power stations, renewable energy has expanded dramatically across Europe and costs have dropped. Nuclear is now more costly than wind and solar power. In Britain alone, small-scale solar output has increased by 26% in the last year.

In theory, there are a number of other nuclear companies – from the US, China, Japan and Russia – keen to build stations of their own design in Britain, but they would want the same price guarantees as EDF for Hinkley Point.

With a general election in the UK looming in May next year, no decisions will be reached on any of these projects any time soon. And a new government might think renewables are a better bet.

Paul Brown, a former environment correspondent for the Guardian, now writes for Climate News Network. He began working as a reporter on a weekly paper in Sussex and progressed to evening and morning newspapers before joining The Guardian in 1981. In his role as environment correspondent, he travelled to more than 50 countries, and to the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

This article was first published by Climate News Network.

The World Bank will invest heavily in clean energy and only fund coal projects in “circumstances of extreme need” because climate change will undermine efforts to eliminate extreme poverty, says its president Jim Yong Kim.

Talking ahead of a UN climate summit in Peru next month, Kim said he was alarmed by World Bank-commissioned research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, which said that as a result of past greenhouse gas emissions the world is condemned to unprecedented weather events.

“The findings are alarming. As the planet warms further, heatwaves and other weather extremes, which today we call once­-in­-a-century events, would become the new climate normal, a frightening world of increased risk and instability.

“The consequences for development would be severe, as crop yields decline, water resources shift, communicable diseases move into new geographical ranges, and sea levels rise.”

“We know that the dramatic weather extremes are already affecting millions of people, such as the five to six feet of snow that just fell on Buffalo, and can throw our lives into disarray or worse.

“Even with ambitious mitigation, warming close to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is locked in. And this means that climate change impact such as extreme heat events may now be simply unavoidable.”

‘Only in extreme need will we do coal again’

But the Bank, which has traditionally been one of the world’s largest funders of fossil fuel projects and has been accused of adding to the problem of climate change, said it could not ignore the poorest countries’ need for power.

“We are going to have to focus all of our energy to move toward renewable and cleaner forms of energy”, said Kim.

“But on the other hand we believe very strongly that the poorest countries have a right to energy and that we not ask these energy ­poor countries to wait until there are ways of ensuring that solar and wind power can provide the kind of base load that all countries need in order to industrialise.

“The stakes have never been higher. We cannot continue down the current path of unchecked growing emissions. The case for taking action now on climate change is overwhelming, and the cost of inaction will only rise.”

Kim was backed by Rachel Kyte, World Bank group vice president and special envoy for climate change. “It will only be in circumstances of extreme need that we would contemplate doing coal again”, she said.

“We would only contemplate doing [it] in the poorest of countries where their energy transition as part of their low-carbon development plan means that there are no other base load power sources available at a reasonable price.”

“The focus is on being able to ramp up our lending and the leveraging of our lending into all forms of renewable energy. That’s the strategy. It includes everything from all sizes of hydro through to wind, to solar, to concentrated solar, to geothermal. I think we’re invested in every dimension of renewable energy. That is what we’re concentrating on.”

Now, what about oil, gas and other fossil fuels

The bank’s report showed that with a 2C warming, soya and wheat crop yields in Brazil could decrease 50-70%: “In the Middle east and north Africa, a large increase in heatwaves combined with warmer average temperatures will put intense pressure on already scarce water resources with major consequences for food security.

“Crop yields could decrease by up to 30% at 1.5-2C and by almost 60% at 3-4C. Pressure on resources might increase the risk of conflict.”

Climate change posed a substantial risk to development and cutting poverty, the report said, adding that action on emissions need not come at the expense of economic growth.

But the bank made no commitment to cut funding for oil or other fossil fuel exploration. Analysis earlier this year by Washington-based NGO Oil Change International showed that the bank had funded $21bn (£13bn) of fossil fuel projects since 2008, including $1bn of oil and other fossil fuel exploration in 2013.

“The bank has taken an important first step in essentially stopping its support for coal-fired power plants, but climate change is caused by more than just coal”, said Stephen Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International.

“The vast majority of currently proven fossil fuel reserves will need to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, but last year the bank provided nearly $1bn in support for finding more of these unburnable carbon reserves.”

John Vidal is Environment Editor for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced with thanks via The Guardian Environment Network.